Afro-Netizen

Lehman Brothers Admits Past Slavery Ties

November 24, 2003

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICAGO -- Lehman Brothers has become the first contractor with the city of Chicago to acknowledge past ties to slavery under a law requiring the disclosure.

An affidavit filed by the financial services firm said that the three brothers who founded the company bought at least one female slave, and "may have personally owned other slaves."

In October 2002, the Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance dictating that companies working with the city disclose whether they ever profited from slavery.

New York-based Lehman Brothers made the disclosure in connection with its role as co-manager of a $145 million O'Hare Airport bond issue, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday.

More than 2,000 slavery disclosure affidavits have been filed by city contractors, officials said, but Lehman Brothers was the first to acknowledge ties to slavery.

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Intra-racial rancor in wake of Lehman disclosure

November 25, 2003

BY FRAN SPIELMAN
City Hall Reporter
Chicago Sun-Times

The [Chicago] City Council champion of the slave reparations movement demanded Monday that Carole Brown apologize to African Americans or step down as CTA board chairwoman for "allowing herself to be used" to defend a financial services firm with past ties to slavery.

Ald. Dorothy Tillman (3rd) said it's insensitive and insulting for Brown, senior vice president of Lehman Brothers, to suggest that "the Lehman Brothers in the 1850s is not the company that it is today."

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Rep. Lewis gets African-American Museum legislation passed

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly today to establish a national museum of black history and culture, pushing the plan a big step closer to reality after 15 years of efforts by Rep. John Lewis, the Georgia congressman and former civil rights leader.

Lewis has introduced legislation in each Congress since 1988 to create the museum. Every session, for one reason or another, the measure has failed in the House or Senate.

An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America

Author Henry Wiencek has just released his newest book, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. Mr. Wiencek written other books on different subject as well as an interesting article in 2001 on his alma mater Yale's complicity in the slave trade entitled "Yale and the Price of Slavery".

Interested in applying for Afro-Netizen's free book giveaway? If so, click here!

Time on Two Crosses

The Organizer of the Civil Rights Movement
By MICHAEL ANDERSON
November 9, 2003

Bayard Rustin became famous for working behind the scenes. This paradox of his celebrity was, to a large degree, inherent in the role he chose to play in the history of his time. From the end of the Great Depression to his death in 1987, at the age of 75, Rustin was the ''master strategist of social change,'' as the historian John D'Emilio writes in his biography, ''Lost Prophet.'' The tactics of public protest that became familiar in the 1960's -- marches on Washington, Freedom Rides, sit-ins, passive resistance, civil disobedience -- were pioneered and refined by Rustin two decades earlier. Indeed, through his decisive influence on Martin Luther King Jr., whom he instructed in the philosophy and tactics of Gandhian nonviolence, Rustin created the model for the social movements of post-World War II America -- civil rights, antiwar, gay liberation, feminist. ''He resurrected mass peaceful protest from the graveyard in which cold war anti-Communism had buried it,'' D'Emilio writes, ''and made it once again a vibrant expression of citizen rights in a free society.''

On four continents, he was esteemed for his mastery of nuts and bolts: ''precisely the number of toilets that would be needed . . . how many doctors, how many first-aid stations, what people should bring with them to eat in their lunches.'' Rustin played major roles in two defining social protests: the Aldermaston march in England in 1958, in which 10,000 people demonstrated against nuclear weapons, and, most famously, the March on Washington in 1963, in which a quarter-million people (more than double the anticipated turn-out and including fully 1 percent of the country's black population) turned out, evidence of a national consensus in support of black rights. The result of eight frantic and exhilarating weeks of work, in which, as D'Emilio writes, Rustin ''had to build an organization out of nothing,'' the March on Washington epitomized why Newsweek called him ''a genius at organization.''

To read the rest of this book review, please click here.

Dean, Kerry & Lieberman have more in common than their alma mater

November 6, 2003

Former governor, Dr. Howard Dean (D-VT), Senator John Kerry (D-MA), and Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) have more in common than their Ivy League alma mater, Yale College; and we're not talking about the fact that they're all rich white guys -- though it is not entirely unrelated.

These three presidential hopefuls have all danced around their positions on affirmative action. According to an article run by the Associated Press last week, Dean, Kerry & Lieberman have all been tentative at best in their support for this policy.

This fact has not slipped by Rev. Al Sharpton who called Howard Dean out on a 1995 comment stating that affirmative action should be class-based versus race-based.

"Negro President": Thomas Jefferson and the Slave Power

November 6, 2003

Volume 50, Number 17 · November 6, 2003
The New York Review of Books

Feature

"The Negro President": Thomas Jefferson and the Slave Power
By Garry Wills

I have admired Jefferson all my life, and still do. His labors to guarantee freedom of religion would in themselves be enough to insure his place in my private pantheon. But there is much else I revere in him. A quarter of a century ago, I published a book praising him as an Enlightenment philosopher. A year ago, I published a book praising him as an artist. Along the way I have written articles that looked at different aspects of his life.[1] But I have only now devoted an entire book to one deadly part of his legacy —the protection and extension of slavery through the three-fifths clause in the Constitution.

To read the rest of this review, please click here.

Dean's "regret" -- but will Blackfolk forget?

November 5, 2003

Former Vermont Governor, Dr. Howard Dean, has publicly stated his "regret" for recent comments he made bringing poor white Southerners who drive pickup trucks with Confederate decals back into the Democratic Party.

This formal "regret" appears to be enough for his southern challenger, Sen. John Edwards, who just last night lambasted Dean for talking down to Southerners. But will Al Sharpton? We'll soon see!

However, as late as this morning, Dean had not rescinded his now infamous "pickup truck" comment, despite the fact that Dean acknowledged the flag was a racist symbol and his campaign from the very outset mirrored the diversity of his home state of snowy-white Vermont.

It's worth noting that The New York Times quoted Senator Edwards as having said that Dean should've apologized last night during the debate. However, Dean did not have the benefit of his afro-strategists whispering in his ears until after the televised debate, wherein he, his fellow Yalie, Sen. John Kerry and southern compatriot, Sen. John Edwards all admitted to having smoked marijuana. (Perhaps Dean was high at the debate. After all, studies do show that marijuana severely impairs judgement -- and no doubt causes erectile dysfunction in mail political antennae.)

Sharpton made a point of stating for the record that he did not believe Howard Dean to be a bigot, but that his unwillingness to apologize for his clear insensitivity was indicative of Dean's "arrogance". Dean's tap-dancing around the issue by injecting MLK quotes did not fool his colleagues at the debate last night in Faneuil Hall in Boston, MA or its audience composed primarily of college-aged men and women who responded to Sharpton's critique with resounding applause.

But don't take our word for what happened last night among and between the Dems, read the transcript of the CNN "Rock the Vote" Democratic presidential debate and judge for yourself.

Howard Dean did not and would not concede the point that every other candidate seem to understand: You don't empathize with Confederate flag-embracers and expect to win over Blackfolk. Even right-wing neo-Dixiecrat, Sen. Zell Meller of Georgia stated that the Confederate flag was too devisive a symbol to be embraced nowadays when interviewed by first-rate media whore, Chris Matthew on MSNBC's "Hardball".

Will Howard Dean pick up Black support after incendiary "pickup" comment?

November 2, 2003

``I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks,'' former Vermont governor Howard Dean was quoted as saying in yesterday's Des Moines Register. "We can't beat George Bush unless we appeal to a broad cross-section of Democrats.''

If Dubya said this, Blackfolk would be outraged -- not particularly surprised -- but outraged nonetheless. So, will we give Howard Dean a pass on this serious political faux pas?

In the wake of Al Sharpton's criticism of Dean's 1995 comment about making affirmative action class-based instead of race-based, Dean apparently is pandering to the white supremacist vote.

In addition to Rev. Al Sharpton attacking Dean's highly insensitive comment, Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Dick Gephardt laid into him, the latter who shares the lead in the polls for the upcoming Iowa Caucus.

What do you think? Does Dean really want the proverbial Confederate vote? What does that say about how good an advocate Dean would for African-Americans and other people of color if he were president?

Your guess is as good as ours. But that statement, combined with Dean's support of the death penalty, the NRA, and his apparent hawkishness regarding our nation's occupation of Iraq, all make Afro-Netizen a little concerned.